Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

> At 11.48 21/12/99 -0500, peter_kirk AT sil.org wrote:
> >Well, Dave, I accept that you know more than me about DSS. Perhaps 
> >even Ian knows more than me. But the reference to omission of the 
> >Melchizedek story was to its absence from the Genesis Apocryphon, 
> >which Ian seems to have made a lot of. 
> 
> Peter, there are no fragments of Gen14 amongst the DSS (the first part of
> Genesis is particularly poorly represented). There is also no mention of
> Melchizedek in Jubilees (I have mentioned problems here elsewhere).
> However, the GenAp is the first occasion in which we come across the
> Melchizedek episode and not unstrangely it is a document in which the
> epithet "Most High God" is quite common.

Please notice what Ian has done here: first he asserts that Gen 14 
is not represented; then he admits, in an aside so hopefully not too 
many people will notice it, that the first part of Genesis is poorly 
represented.  Let me expand on that: there's a gap in the material 
between chapters 8 and 12 (which is to say nothing survives of 
chapters 9, 10 and 11); the Genesis Apocryphon stops at 15:4 and 
there is nothing more of Genesis surviving until 17:12; we have only 
the latter parts of chapters 18 and 19; chapter 20 is not preserved; 
and he wants to make a big deal about absence of chapter 14!  Yet 
he admits it is in fact preserved.  From there he wants to try and 
explain away preservation of chapter 14 in the GA by resorting to 
the document's use of the phrase El Elyon.  Translation: "It's there 
and it's staring me in the face, but I don't want to deal with it."


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
Teach me your way, O Lord, and I will walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart that I may fear your name.
                                   Psalm 86:11